Aprender el español no es fácil
by the silence in between
Summary: Anya tries to teach Xander Spanish. It goes about as well as you'd expect. Xander/Anya, with a shocking lack of angst. Plus, Spanish-language humor.


**Disclaimer** — _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ is the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, The WB/UPN, and 20th Century Fox. I own _nada_ and make no monetary profit from this work of creative fiction.

**Dedication** — To all of my Spanish teachers over the years, who mercifully taught me about _amigos falsos_ before I made any excitingly embarrassing mistakes.

* * *

"¡_Buen trabajo_! _P_—"

"You're pronouncing your B's all wrong," Anya interjected. "You shouldn't be puffing all of that air out at me. Plus, B's between vowels make soft B sounds. It's still like a B, but your lips don't touch."

Xander practiced the sound and then frowned. "How is that possible?" He tried again. "Lips touching is what makes the B sound!"

Anya sighed and massaged her temples. "Never mind. Just keep going."

Screwing up his face in concentration, Xander resumed his attempt. "_Podes_… no, wait, _puedes_… or should it be _podéis_?"

"I highly doubt that you're going to be speaking to any Spaniards, so you can ignore _vosotros_ forms," Anya snorted.

Xander sighed. "_Ustedes poden_… no, _pueden_… _ir por_… _para_… I give up!" he shouted, flinging his pencil across the Magic Box for good measure. "I'm never going to learn Spanish! It's impossible."

Anya rolled her eyes. "No, it's not. Old Spanish was the first language I learned after I became a vengeance demon. It's easy."

"Yeah, well, you had all of those vengeance-y powers," Xander whined. "It was like magic for you!"

Anya gasped. "How dare you!" Without warning, she grabbed her substantial Spanish book and smacked Xander's shoulder with it.

"_Ow_!" Xander shouted, ducking out of range of Anya's arms. "Ow! What was that for?"

"I'll have you know that I had to work really hard to learn Spanish! It took three years of lessons with D'Hoffryn before my language skills were proficient enough to grant wishes in the Iberian kingdoms. There was no magic involved, but I still achieved fluency. You know how I did that, Xander?"

Still clutching his shoulder in pain, Xander shook his head.

"_Motivation_," Anya declared. "I had both the desire and necessity to learn a second language."

"Yeah, and what was that?" Xander shot back. "Fear of D'Hoffryn?"

Anya's nostrils flared. "No," she answered hotly. After a moment, she frowned. "Well, yes, a little. But my _primary_ motivation was to get out of Scandinavia. Do you have any idea how cold it is there? And only speaking Old Norse kind of limits where you can go to grant wishes. So I studied really hard, and as a result I got to go to Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms in the North and enjoy the warm weather and sunny beaches. Of course, it turned out that the Iberian Peninsula is overrun with those awful cotton-top hell-beasts," Anya shuddered, "but that's beside the point. If I, an uneducated and illiterate Scandinavian peasant turned brand-new vengeance demon, could learn Spanish, then so can you. I mean, didn't you take French in high school?"

"Yeah, and I nearly _failed_ it," Xander pointed out. "And what's my motivation? I get by perfectly well speaking only English, and, I'm sorry, but you're nowhere near as terrifying as D'Hoffryn."

Anya huffed. "What are you talking about? Half of your construction crew is Latino! Wouldn't you like to impress both your bosses and crew members by increasing your communication skills, thus ensuring that you receive both a promotion and a hefty raise, with which you can buy me lots of lovely and expensive things?"

Despite his learning-induced irritation, Xander couldn't help but smile at his fiancée's characteristically blunt and shrewd appraisal of his work situation. "You're right," he conceded, planting a kiss on her lips.

"I'm always right," she reminded him. "Mmm…" she breathed softly as Xander gave her another, deeper kiss. "_Un beso_."

"_Un beso_," Xander repeated, trying to remember Anya's rules for pronouncing B's. Lightly brushing her cheek with his hand, he added, "_Te amo_."

Anya smiled up at him with bright eyes. "_Y yo te amo a ti_," she responded. She leaned in for another kiss, then shook her head. "You're distracting me again with your lips," she complained. Pushing her notebook in front of him, she commanded, "_Practica_."

Taking a deep breath, Xander looked at the sentence Anya had written in her loopy cursive and concentrated on translating it into Spanish. "_Hola, Juan_," he began, trying but failing to clearly enunciate each vowel. "_Me llamo Xander_. _Soy el jefe. Estoy muy excitado que… trabajas... con nosotros hoy._" The exercise complete, Xander beamed expectantly at his _novia_.

"Okay, in that last sentence _trabajas_ should be in the subjunctive, because you're describing emotions," Anya stated frankly, forgoing any sugarcoating in her assessment of her fiancé's performance. "Also, you just said that Juan's presence at work arouses you."

Xander turned bright pink. "What?" he sputtered. "I thought that _excitado_ meant _excited_?"

"Not that kind of excited," Anya smirked, resting her hand on Xander's thigh.

"Oh," Xander said, understanding dawning. "In that case, _lo siento, Juan_," he improvised, grinning. "_Estoy muy embarazado_."

At that, Anya burst into tremulous laughter; fully doubled over on the bench, she clutched her sides as if in pain.

"I don't get it," Xander frowned. "What's so funny?"

"_Embarazada_… doesn't mean… _embarrassed_," Anya gasped out between bursts of laughter. Sitting up straight and wiping her eyes, she explained, "It means _pregnant_."

Xander's cheeks went straight from bright pink to crimson. He lowered his head to the table with a _thunk_.

"Poor Xander," Anya snickered. "Poor, pregnant, aroused Xander."

Xander groaned, all thoughts of promotions and raises forgotten. This was going to take _forever_.


End file.
